Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
While Martin Luther King was a major influence on Patricia Stephens Due, she knows that the civil rights movement was spurred on by average citizens like her throughout the South in the 1960s, and she sets out in this memoir to write her story as well as the stories of her fellow grassroots activists. Her tale is interwoven with that of her daughter, Tananarive, who won an American Book Award this year for her novel The Living Blood. Patricia's narrative takes the reader through protests at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Florida and numerous arrests that garnered national attention, leading to a correspondence with King as well as baseball hero and activist Jackie Robinson. But Particia's activism did not end with the movement; one of the memoir's most powerful anecdotes, written by Tananarive, recounts a showdown years later between Patricia and an intimidating cluster of police officers who arrived at the family home in Miami in a misguided, racially motivated hunt for thieves. Also tracking the achievements of lawyer John Due, Patricia's husband and Tananarive's father, mother and daughter write (in alternating chapters) with an energy that is cathartic in its recounting of past obstacles, and optimistic in its hopes for the future. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. (Jan.) Forecast: The familial structure and content of this memoir, and its on-the-ground accounts of the civil rights movement, could make it a sleeper hit, urged on by a six-city author tour that should draw further media coverage. Fans of The Living Blood and Tananarive Due's other novels will certainly search out this title, and it should sharpen appetites for her next fiction project, The Good House, due in September 2003. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Novelist Tananarive is noted for works like The Black Rose; her mother, Patricia, was a civil rights activist with CORE. In alternate chapters, they detail their struggles against racial discrimination, name calling, and worse while paying a moving tribute to the Civil Rights Movement and its foot soldiers. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two generations of civil-rights insights from an activist in her 60s and her daughter, a newspaper reporter turned novelist (The Living Blood, 2001, etc.). Eschewing the broad-brush approach of many civil-rights memoirs--high-profile marches, mass arrests, White House signings, etc.--the Dues favor a narrative technique more akin to pointillism. In 33 alternating chapters, mother and daughter explain how each became involved in behind-the-scenes organizing, as well as occasional high-profile encounters. Patricia honed her awareness of racial injustice in rural Florida, where the substandard Negro schools she attended could not stunt her inquiring mind. In high school, outraged by the principal's lackadaisical attitude about quality education, she tried to get him removed by launching a petition drive, a tactic she had learned about from her stepfather, a civics teacher, and her mother, a voter-registration activist. By the time she entered Florida A&M University, Patricia was deeply involved in civil-rights activism, as was her equally brainy and committed sister Priscilla; together they faced jail time and beatings by police. Patricia and her husband, a civil-rights lawyer, passed this crusading spirit to their daughter, Tananarive. By the time she came of age, some civil-rights battles had been won in the courts, but she knew she would have to combat racism on an individual basis every day. The book is filled with mini-portraits of the obscure as well as the famous (Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, et al.). The authors quickly identify almost every character by race, giving credit where credit is due to blacks and whites alike--as well as parceling out blame where blame is due to blacks and whites alike. They don't adhere to a linear chronology, which can be confusing, and the alternating chapters don't always mesh smoothly. But the anecdotes, based on family letters, school papers, and other closely held memorabilia, are unmatched in other accounts. Occasionally disjointed, but readers will quite likely be both charmed and educated by these dedicated, candid, brilliant women. Author tour
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review